1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image processing apparatus, a method for controlling the image processing apparatus, and a program therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
With conventional destination specification in mail transmission, a user has had to select either a method of selecting a destination from a destination database registered, for example, in an address book or a method of directly entering an address via a keyboard.
PC mail software, on the other hand, presents concerned destination candidates from registered destination information to the user based on a character string directly entered by the user. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-16003 discusses a technique for combining the method of selecting a destination from registered data with the method of directly entering an address (hereinafter this hybrid method is referred to as autocomplete).
The above-mentioned technique has conventionally been applied to a single protocol (E-mail or HTTP protocol). On the other hand, a transmission function in a multifunction peripheral (MFP) handles a plurality of protocols such as facsimile (FAX), E-mail, Internet facsimile (i-Fax), and so on, and enables multi-address transmission for these protocols (hereinafter referred to as multi-protocol transmission). Further, since each of the above mentioned protocols has each individual destination attribute, the user has to correctly set not only a destination such as the Fax number and address but also various attributes according to the relevant destination protocol. Therefore, the autocomplete function has the following problems:                Even when presenting destination candidates from registered data to the user, only address character strings are presented but attribute information for each destination is not presented.        When the user enters the entire character string without selecting the registered data, the user cannot enter the attribute information for the destination by selecting the registered data.        
These problems have not been surfaced as problems to be solved since the conventional autocomplete function handles a single protocol not provided with E-mail attributes or not requiring destination-specific settings. For example, the conventional autocomplete function is not provided with a split transmission setting which is one of E-mail attributes. At best, the entire mail software has only one split transmission setting, instead of having a split transmission setting for each destination. With facsimile (FAX), since it has not been necessary to change attributes generally if common attributes are used, the above-mentioned two problems have not been surfaced.
However, if the autocomplete function is applied to a communication protocol requiring attribute setting, the above-mentioned problems arise remarkably degrading operability.